Over the last couple of years I have been very privileged to enjoy some exchanges and conversations with a truly unique and iconic writer. Dr Rhinehart has provide me with some gratefully received feedback and encouragement in my mainly well intentioned but disorganised creative output. As I’m not currently relying on my more obtuse tinkering for income I can be more random than some. And in many ways I don’t need a dice to decide which way I’m going dive because my attention is so divided and my memory so inconsistent that every waking moment brings it’s own surprise.

I have a number of notes and a schema that plan out a dice driven drawing system. I might use these to illustrate my next musical experiment. The ‘No Direction’ thing I recently made was a good example of random connection. It might not have the bravery of throwing a dice into an interpersonal relationship but with the freedom of no commercial market to rely upon one stepping stone often leads to opportunistically chosen second stones.

I did recently promise Dr Luke a page link and I tried it but it looked wrong so until I sort it it out, this is where I’m at. In the process of trying to work the link thing out I did discovered the Diceworld documentary on YouTube which is linked in sequence below. If you aren’t aware of Dicelife or the Diceman, please have look. I read the book many years after it was published when I was at Art School. It wasn’t on the official reading list but together with listening to Captain Beefheart & watching Eraserhead it was in the loop.

I have no idea why I may have missed this previously. It’s a wonderful film, honest, insightful and humorous. Dr Luke….. thank you for your engagement. I really am very honoured.

2 responses to “Embrace the Dice World”

Thanks, Adrian, for your over-complimentary thoughts. I’ve posted a link to your site and hope it lets more people discover your amazingly varied work.

Are you selling much of it? You’re too good to have your lights hidden under bushels. But the art world and the book world are, as Nassim Taleb says in his book THE BLACK SWAN, creatures that live in a chance-filled world. Among equally talented people, one will be “discovered” and make millions and the equally talented other (like Van Gogh) will live and die in obscurity. In my case, the DICE MAN for some reason caught on in the late 90s and has been going gangbusters ever since. But my equally entertaining and interesting WHIM (earlier published as ADVENTURES OF WIM) wallows in obscurity. THE DICE MAN sells well all around the world–except in the United States. Go figure.

You seem to have a very laid-back personna not too worried about material success, confident in your knowledge that many people like the work you do and you certainly enjoy doing it. In fact you’re so laid-back, I don’t know whether you’re a millionaire or a struggling artist: in either case you seem quite content.

That is not only kindest comment I have received but very much on the money.

I am neither a millionaire or a destitute garret dweller. Sadly I am gainfully employed which is perhaps the biggest distractor from my creative endeavours. I will however persevere with increasing randomness to avoid complicity. I have always been of the mind that the truest and purest art form that exists has no value, no practical function, no ideology, no sponsorship and no ambition other than it’s own existence. If it can survive in that airless environment, it may well be worth treasuring. So maybe ‘Whim’ is the one. I’ll definitely be looking it up.